Wheres the evidence Abyssea revived FFXI?

[Greatguardian]

This thread makes so much more sense now that it's clear who the OP is.

[Zumi]

Abyssea was good for the following reasons. It had gear in it better then what we hard in ages. No more sidegrade crap but actual upgrades. It had weapons that were very powerful didn't take a lot of time gave people something to work for. Everything took a smaller amount of people to accomplish and stuff could be soloed or duoed easily. Decent drop rates made players happy they were getting their empyrean armor.

Basically gave people a lot of stuff to do when before there was really not much at all.

Old endgame was pretty dumb camp Fafnir for 3 hours a day, Tiamat for 72 hours ect, do salvage for 1% droprates the list goes on.

[Benihana]

This thread makes so much more sense now that it's clear who the OP is.

Some people are just so mad.

Oh well. In other news, the care cup has emptied.

Must be Tanaka's doing. AFK quitting game/life!

[cidbahamut]

AFK quitting game/life!

Well at least there was one positive thing to come out of this thread.

[Arcon]

HNM was 'endgame' because it was the most popular event alongside Sky for a very very long time. Both events found themselves never quite reaching obsolescence until well into Abyssea. These were also the two events that most individuals would call 'endgame' when quoted over the years.

I have a list of individuals who would disagree (especially about the "most popular" part). Those two were the "most popular" endgame only before everything else was introduced.

It also didn't help that SE literally did their best to keep certain pieces of HNM top in the slot even as new events like Einherjar, Assault, Nyzul Isle, Campaign, ZNM and so forth came out. These events too were endgame but did they beat Black Belt? Ridills? Adaman Hauberk? Hecatomb Cap? lolKoenig Body? Hecatomb Leggings? No. This reluctance to end that content (or duplicate their drops elsewhere) is why the bot wars escalated, why people dropped 2k USD for the most leet bots and why botting became standard at most HNMs.

Reluctance is a strong word, since they did duplicate almost all of them. Admittedly, it took longer for Einherjar, but it happened. In this thread alone I said three times that the only notable HNM drops were Defending Ring, Ridill and Hauteclaire. Arguing about anything else is pointless. Fact is, HNM was 99% about the money drops (including Hauteclaire and Ridill for most LS) and 1% about trying to get a Defending Ring (possibly less).

Oh and I know you're going to bring up Einherjar [..]

(Because I brought it up the last five times when we talked about this?)

[..] and I should address that. Einherjar wasn't a replacement to Kings - it was a supplement and a stupid sidestep. In the time it took to build up an Odin, the people cheating probably had enough shots at the world spawn to laugh at your pathetic Odin pool if he happened to even drop what you wanted. Hadean junk instead of a more Nid-like pool? Well that's just too bad, see you in the next cycle... a month from now.

It seems you're only talking about one group of players when you say these things: your own HNM crowd. It wasn't a replacement (also, I never said that), it wasn't a supplement either, though. It was an alternate route for people not participating in the HNM scene. Simple as that. It was designed to not be as efficient as HNMs. SE always wanted the people that were going all out to have the best (something that Abyssea washed away, some people will argue that it was for the best, getting rid of all the elitism and whatnot). They wanted people camping HNM whenever they could to have the best shot at abjuration gear and black belt items. The reason they made those items drop off Einherjar and KS99 was just to give people who didn't want to buy them, or go through a similar fighting experience to be able to do that without the competition. And people did that. Sure, it took them longer, but with two Odins a month (nice made up number, btw) they were still able to get decent drops. Compare that with the (I'm always pretty optimistic, I'm sure you can tell) 10 Nidhoggs that popped a month, of which I'm guessing you claimed 4 (very optimistic), and the drop rates don't sound too far apart.

36man content and you have to wait a month for 4 abjurations in a pool. Classic SE, classic Tanaka.

I didn't even wanna argue with you about the fact that it took longer, but these numbers just make me twitch. Try 20man content and 8 abjurations a month. That means every three months, everyone gets one body abjuration on average (accounting for the fact that sometimes T3 was a bitch). Meaning in one year (accounting for even more fails), everyone would have gotten three abjurations on average. Sure, it may not have always been the one you wanted, but even if one of them was a Dalmatica or Adaman Hauberk, you got a drop that HNMLS have been selling for prices in the double-digit millions. And considering that many linkshells were able to do that, I'd say it's a significant step up.

Of course, now you will come and argue that wasting one year to get one item you're after is insane, forgetting about the fact that the average content-delivery time is about every two years (time between major expansions/updates) and about the fact that it was only ~2h out of every week to do it, and not stopping you from still doing everything else, meaning everyone was able to keep up with everything that was released. SE simply weren't shooting for what MMOG players are used to these days, rapid, temporary content. They didn't wanna release FFXI as a game, but as a project, something that people would literally play for years, something they succeeded at, but something that doesn't fly well with people now that they've shown them Abyssea.

Don't even try to defend Sandworm because it's going to make you look stupid.

I'll tell you what SE's only mistake with Sandworm (same as every other world spawn) was: they underestimated the hardcore players. Why did SE create world spawns in the first place? Why did kings exist, when they're so prone to abuse by the community? Simple: SE didn't know that. Their intention was one that I extremely looked forward to when I decided to try and play FFXI and first heard about these monsters lurking in remote places: that only the most experienced and skilled adventurers would dare to go there, find the beasts and take on challenging battles. That backfired, badly. They didn't expect the players to be so zealous over them that they would destroy their own lives just to get a claim. What was intended as an unique adventuring experience turned into a business.

And SE did realize that, despite what you're trying to sell people on. They did try to battle it. Sandworm was one of the results, but I'll get to that in a bit. Their first measure was something else: the introduction of the random claim delay. It was extremely successful in preventing botters at first. However, cleverly set up bots would still have an advantage over other bots (and players), especially with several mules. So they had to think of something else. And I repeat, this is not an easy task. Short of removing said content (which they did now, when it could have actually been how they envisioned it), so someone thought of another idea, namely Sandworm and Dark Ixion. Mobs that don't always spawn in the same zone, let alone the same place. And it helped with that, too, although again, they underestimated how crazy hardcore players really are. They didn't know people would actually stand ready for hours just waiting for one mob to pop. But people did. However, since SE made it harder for botters (a success in that regard, btw), it's even easier to complain about these mobs than other mobs.

The long spawn window? A measure to prevent people from trying to camp it all the time. Surely enough, this backfired as well. You call it a violation of their "word to the players", and again, the same point over and over again, they simply didn't know people would be this crazy about game content. Irresponsible? Maybe. In that regard, making a MMOG is irresponsible in itself, because it is an addiction, after all. People will always get worked up about it. The spawn windows were an attempt to precisely counter that. Because, why would you stay up till 4AM to wait for SW to pop? You should be in bed by then, it simply moved out of your play window. But that's not what hardcore players will think. They'll think "Fuck SE, now I have to stay up longer because of this crap!", which is pretty much just rephrasing what you just said.

The only mistake SE ever made with the design of HNMs was underestimating the playerbase and their willingness to sacrifice their own life for it. There's two ways to look at it. You're saying they're responsible for making this system the way it is. Others would say the people who participate in that are to blame, because they inflict it upon themselves.

I'm not even gonna bother to defend either of those points, because that's not even the original question. This little detour was inspired by your avoidance of answering to what I tried to say, namely that you can't tell people what was fun and what wasn't. That is outside of the realm of what the development team made right or wrong, it's about the aforementioned moral superiority you assume over other players. And it's not always black or white either. I personally hated Sandworm and Dark Ixion, I liked the idea of kings, but I didn't like competing against bots. I loved camping King Arthro and Simurgh for example. 21~24h repop, plenty of competition usually (at least for KA), but hardly anyone bothered with bots for them (I'm talking last few years). It was just normal competition. It had its ups and downs, it had its rules, it had people who broke them, but it also had its fair share of nice and memorable moments and was generally a good time. I even helped other people camp these NMs after I got what I wanted, just because I liked it. It was casual camping, camped it whenever the window was in our timezone, didn't stay up till 4AM for it, didn't cheat or bot or insult one another. Now, what sets these apart from kings? Just the kind of competition you had, nothing else. And for that I love one, but didn't care much for the other. So it's obviously not SE's fault, because they gave me something I enjoyed. It was the players who made it into something that I didn't.

[Nynja]

The long spawn window? A measure to prevent people from trying to camp it all the time. Surely enough, this backfired as well. You call it a violation of their "word to the players", and again, the same point over and over again, they simply didn't know people would be this crazy about game content. Irresponsible? Maybe. In that regard, making a MMOG is irresponsible in itself, because it is an addiction, after all. People will always get worked up about it. The spawn windows were an attempt to precisely counter that. Because, why would you stay up till 4AM to wait for SW to pop? You should be in bed by then, it simply moved out of your play window. But that's not what hardcore players will think. They'll think "Fuck SE, now I have to stay up longer because of this crap!", which is pretty much just rephrasing what you just said.

The only mistake SE ever made with the design of HNMs was underestimating the playerbase and their willingness to sacrifice their own life for it. There's two ways to look at it. You're saying they're responsible for making this system the way it is. Others would say the people who participate in that are to blame, because they inflict it upon themselves.

What fucktarded logic would concieve the following:
If players will camp hours on end for rare gear, we should make mobs take even LONGER to spawn, meaning the gear will be even rarer, therefor people will be less likely to spend time camping it.

[Seiowan]

Well, I'm back BECAUSE of Abyssea. I'd say that's at least partial evidence that Abyssea brought back some players to the fold

[Arcon]

What fucktarded logic would concieve the following:
If players will camp hours on end for rare gear, we should make mobs take even LONGER to spawn, meaning the gear will be even rarer, therefor people will be less likely to spend time camping it.

"Maybe if we made it absurdly long, and there's no efficient way to find it quickly, they'll realize it's pointless to do this kind of camping?"

I don't know. I don't agree with it. As I said, I hate Sandworm and Dark Ixion. I just find this explanation more likely than all of SE going "Hah, this will troll people even harder!". Either way, fact is when the circumstances got more extreme, the campers got more extreme.

[FrankReynolds]

This thread is retarded. A lot of people quit because of abyssea. A lot of people quit for various reasons that were not related to abyssea, like new games and the whole billing issue. Hell, half my Sea/dynamis shell quit to play FFXIV (and then just quit period). There were also a lot of people who started because of it, came back, and / or started second/third accounts. I highly doubt that even SE knows why people quit or join / restart. It's not like they give you a questionaire about it, or at least they never gave me one.

[Kiroh]

This thread is retarded. A lot of people quit because of abyssea. A lot of people quit for various reasons that were not related to abyssea, like new games and the whole billing issue. Hell, half my Sea/dynamis shell quit to play FFXIV (and then just quit period). There were also a lot of people who started because of it, came back, and / or started second/third accounts. I highly doubt that even SE knows why people quit or join / restart. It's not like they give you a questionaire about it, or at least they never gave me one.

This is pretty much it. Neither side can say how many people quit or returned because of Abyssea itself, as people join and quit all the time for all kinds of reasons. Unless SE starts putting out questionnaires when you cancel your content ID, we'll never know and even then it's unlikely SE would ever release that information if they had it (which they don't).

In other words this whole thread is "My opinion is more valid than your opinion so STFU YOU NOOB!", confirming my suspicion that this is indeed similar (if not identical) to a religious 'debate'.

It's sad that threads like this get hundreds of responses, it really is...

(And with that, my contribution to this troll fest has ended.)